


A White Christmas

by lovely_ericas



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, S/T Christmas Exchange 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 10:57:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5537357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovely_ericas/pseuds/lovely_ericas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Request: On Christmas Eve, after their child(ren) have gone to bed, Sybil and Tom do some last minute wrapping of presents and stuffing stockings/getting presents stacked under the tree. Modern AU please.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A White Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> hi, zip-goes-a-million! i hope you like it! i apologize for the uninspired title but I had a lot of fun writing it.

“Time for bed, darlings!” Sybil called as Tom returned from putting their three-year-old Teagan to bed.

“Smokey’s stuck in the tree!” Rory shrieked. “Get her down, Daddy!”

Smokey, who had been named by little Teagan, had been very interested in the tree all evening. Her interest had only grown as Tom, Sybil, and the children hung ornaments on the branches.

She had begun to climb the tree while Tom had been occupied with putting Teagan to sleep and Sybil played cards with the older two, now, she appeared very much to be stuck. Smokey flailed on her tree branch and the tree swayed.

Tom reached up and one arm holding the tree to steady it, he extracted the terrified cat.

“Alright, bedtime for real now.” Sybil said, clapping her hands as Tom clutched Smokey and set her gently on the ground.

“Oh, Mum, please not yet!” Saoirse and Rory begged together. “Just a little bit longer!”

“Very well, fifteen minutes longer,” Tom promised. “But remember the longer it takes you to get to sleep, the longer it’ll be until Santa comes to bring you your presents.”

Rory widened his eyes. “I’m going to bed now!” He declared, jumping off the sofa and running to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

Saoirse looked suspicious at her parents from her perch on the sofa. At nine and as the oldest, Saoirse was fairly certain that Santa was a fake. Fairly but not completely certain. On the other hand, even if Santa wasn’t real, what her da had said was true. Christmas would come more quickly the sooner she went to bed.

“Are you planning on staying up very long?” Sybil asked her daughter, smiling. 

“No, but I want Daddy to read me a chapter of Harry Potter before bed.” Saoirse said as her desire for Christmas to come as soon as it could and her desire to stay up the longest as the oldest warred. She followed her brother into the bathroom.

Sybil went to tuck in Rory and read him his bedtime story while Tom watched carefully to make sure that Saoirse brushed her teeth and washed her face properly.

Sybil turned the light off in Rory’s room and wished her son good night. She stood in the hallway, listening to her husband reading aloud and recounting the adventures of Harry, Ron, and Hermione to their daughter. Saoirse had caught the “Potter bug” even more intensely than her parents had about twenty years previously. She and Tom were halfway through Prisoner of Azkaban. Sybil smiled.

Sybil truly felt lucky. She was thirty-five, working as a nurse, a job she loved, married to the love of her life, and blessed with three of the world’s cleverest, most wonderful children. 

She and Tom still had presents to wrap and place under the tree and stockings to stuff. The holidays as parents was always work but Sybil loved Christmas and she didn’t mind the work to make the children happy. 

She pulled wrapping paper and ribbon from the closet next to the living room, and after setting them down on the coffee table, sat down on the sofa. Tom slipped into the room not long after, holding Prisoner of Azkaban, using his thumb as a bookmark.

“Is Saoirse asleep?” Sybil asked softly as Tom picked up a length of ribbon, marking the page he and Saoirse had stopped at. He nodded.

“Sleeping as soundly as Teagan. Sounder than Teagan, probably.” He said, chuckling. Their youngest had had restless sleep as a baby and until recently she had suffered from night terrors.

Tom took her hand. “How are you, my love?” He rubbed his thumb over the calluses on her hand. 

“I’m fine, just a bit tired is all. Looking after the kids all day is exhausting, especially when they’ve had more sugars and sweets than in weeks. They get so excited to see their cousins and that excitement lasts for ages. I can’t imagine how you manage every day.”

Tom was a journalist and worked from home. He looked after Teagan in the mornings before he took her to her preschool and in the afternoons he looked after all three of the children before Sybil came home from work.

“Teagan can certainly be a handful but if I can get her settled down with paper and markers, especially if I say we should draw a nice picture for Mummy, she’s occupied for hours.” Tom said.

Sybil smiled and leaned back on the sofa. “Teagan draws lovely pictures. Should we start wrapping the presents?”

“Absolutely,” Tom agreed. “But first I have something for us.” He disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a tray containing two glasses of eggnog with a cinnamon stick in each. 

“Oh, Tom, how lovely!” Sybil declared, taking the glass as Tom handed it to her. “I completely forgot Rory and Saoirse told me you had made eggnog. Is there some for Christmas Day as well?”

“Plenty, darling, though I’ve put crème de menthe in ours.” Tom said, clinking his glass with Sybil’s. “And your shopping trip with Teagan went well?”

Sybil laughed. “Quite well, as we got all I’d planned. Teagan fell asleep on the bus ride home after eating her chocolate, and smearing it across her face, so I simply carried her home from the bus stop.”

They cuddled on the sofa for a while, reminiscing on Christmases past. 

“Remember our Christmas in that awful little apartment after we’ve first moved in together?” Sybil asked, reaching for a box and candy cane wrapping paper. 

Tom handed her the scissors, groaning. “Oh lord, the heating was broken and we were freezing. I wanted to impress you so I bought that tall tree that fell down in the middle of the night with a tremendous crash!”

Sybil joined in, passing him a length of ribbon. “Or our first Christmas party as a couple. Mary kept talking about Downton this and that like a frightful snob and, oh, Rose tried to seduce you in the bathroom!”

Tom hid his face under a pillow as he turned red and shook with laughter. “It wasn’t quite her fault. She didn’t know I was your boyfriend and was sloshed out of her mind.”

“Still, I can never quite look her in the eye, even now.” Sybil insisted. “Lucky Rose, she doesn’t remember that night at all!”

Tom lifted the pillow off his face and wrapped a present for Rory. “We’ve had lovely Christmases too. Our Christmas in Dublin?”

“One of our best Christmases.” Sybil agreed, taking the present from Tom and placing it under the tree. “Saoirse’s first Christmas also stands out.”

“When she was terrified of Santa?” Tom remembered, taking Saoirse’s present from Sybil. “She cried and nothing would stop her but your father taking off his Santa beard.”

“Is that the last of the presents?” Tom asked, turning back to Sybil after adding Saoirse’s present to the pile under the tree.

“I think so,” Sybil said. “We’ve just the stockings to stuff.”

Tom handed oranges, ginger snaps, and small trinkets to Sybil who filled the children’s stockings. 

Sybil hung up the last of the stockings and the two of them turned the light off in the living room and quietly, crept through the hallway to their room.

“I think this will be our best Christmas yet.” Sybil said, smiling as she climbed into bed, pulling the covers up to her shoulders.

“I agree, love.” Tom said, turning off the lamp by his side of the bed.

“Merry Christmas, Tom.” Sybil whispered.

“Merry Christmas, Sybil.” Tom whispered back.


End file.
